


The Smeltry

by threewalls



Category: Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings, Vagrant Story
Genre: Blacksmithing, Community: areyougame, Crossing Timelines, F/M, Interspecies, Language Difficulties, Meta, Xeno
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-07-19
Updated: 2009-07-19
Packaged: 2017-10-15 02:38:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/156182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/threewalls/pseuds/threewalls
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><cite>Fran wonders where the stone sent Balthier, and when. This Ivalice is not the Ivalice she knows. The Mist lies thick in this city, and in the air, Fran can smell the sea. But Lea Monde does not exist in her memories and they count the years here in centuries from the date of their saint Iocus.</cite></p>
            </blockquote>





	The Smeltry

**Author's Note:**

> Written with much help from lynndyre. Involves speculation about connections between FFXII:RW, FFT:The Lion War, and Vagrant Story, but no spoilers.

Fran wonders where the stone sent Balthier, and when. This Ivalice is not the Ivalice she knows. The Mist lies thick in this city, and in the air, Fran can smell the sea. But Lea Monde does not exist in her memories and they count the years here in centuries from the date of their saint Iocus.

Every brick of this ruined city is inscribed with words that Fran can read as easy as looking but those that inhabit the city rarely speak them. They cannot speak to her, though perhaps her ears, her nails, her stature would inhibit them. Viera are a story-book legend, Sydney has told her, to explain why his people only look at her when they think she cannot see. Fran has seen not a single hume whose skin mimicks the colour of her own.

John turns his eyes away from her only when he thinks that he has looked too long. John is Sydney's partner, the discipline of steel and muscle that stands behind the pronouncements of leadership. When Sydney leaves the city to seek greater knowledge to aid Fran's return to her own time, it is in John's company that she stays.

John's knowledge of Fran's language is all spell words, stilted utterances of the names of the elements, directions, injuries and healing. He apologises when he addresses Fran in his own tongue. Sydney can converse with her, through the shadows that inhabit him, but with John Hardin, broad of shoulder and blunt of fingers, Fran wants something that needs no spoken language.

Fran watches John at the forge, stripped of his jerkin and his jacket, chest bare but for a heavy leather apron, arms bare but for dark dusting of curled hair. Glow from the forge glistens upon his brow, on the pull and release of well-built, well-practised muscles. Enclosed by a stone ceiling, there is no light in the room but the banked fire before him, no other point to watch.

Fran sits on a central, sturdy, wooden bench. Sometimes, John nods in her direction, when his hammer strikes the anvil, not the blade, to keep his rhythm steady.

The room smells of acrid lit firestone, perpetually hot. Of wood, and dust, and of their sweating flesh. John smells like hume, firestone and leather. Fran longs to taste his skin. Sweat gathers under her arms, between her breasts and between her legs.

A sword is not quickly made, but this is no distraction and all allure. In time and in watching, Fran's blood courses to the ring of John's hammer on metal, the rhythmic swing of his arm. His quick turn to the wall shocks her from complacency, the violent plunge of the blank into a brine-barrel. The steam smells of salt. Fran's mouth waters and she wants.

John sets his tools in place, hangs the apron, and reaches for his folded clothes. Fran has set her hand upon them.

" _Debile_ ," Fran asks. Is he tired?

John shakes his head, curious.

Fran places her hand on his bare chest, drawing down with her nails through his hair. As he worked, Fran watched the stretch and flex of the scars on John's back, so like the familiar furrows that Fran has tended on her partner's back. John is hardening when her hand reaches him, cups him, and his eyes widen in recognition.

He takes her hand away from his body, but holds and does not release it. John says Sydney's name.

Fran shrugs, says the name back to John. She hopes she recognises the cadence of a question.

John shakes his head, and mutters something in his own language, for his own benefit. He touches her face, and would lean forward for her mouth. Fran touches her fingertip on his lips.

" _Halte_ , John."

" _...Halte_ , Fran?"

With her free hand, Fran unfastens her bodice's side clasps, its iron edges loud falling on the stone floor; she puts their joined hands on her bare breast. A step backward brings the edge of the bench against her, sturdy wood from ages past. John follows her with his body, and it is so easy to wrap her hand behind his neck and lead his mouth down. John bites her nipple before sucking, and even then, scrapes rough bristles against tender skin; Fran scores her nails along the back of his neck. They moan together, vibrations echoing through their flesh.

Fran was ready watching him, is ready still. His buttocks are clothed, but shapely under her hands, his groin shapelier still. He bites her again when she draws nails along the front seam of his trousers, seeking to unpick them. John unlaces himself, puts his cock in her hand, and moves his mouth from her right breast to the left.

John's blood flows high and hot already from the forge. Fran is careful with his cock, nails angled away from the shaft even as she eases down his foreskin with the circle of her finger and thumb. She presses the length of his cock up against his body, rolls the heel of her hand over the captured head. A man who enjoys nails, who enjoys knives, enjoys a strong grip. Three harsh strokes and she can smell the first bitter hints of his desire painting her palm.

John mouths the arc of her collarbone; Fran drops her head to lick the salt-musk-smoke tang from his neck. She can hear his pulse fluttering, feel the fast beating rhythm in her lips and in her hand.

Fran pushes away the pants of her armour, down and off. John touches between Fran's legs, spread easy and eager for him. Her thighs are slick with sweat and with her banked pleasure. John looks at her eyes, surprised but not unhappy. John's grin lights his whole face.

Fran rocks herself back, one arm behind her, the wooden bench taking all her weight. She hooks the points of her ankles behind John's back, crosses her wrists behind his neck. John spreads her lips with his fingers, two twisting in to test her depth. Fran flexes her thighs, pulling him closer, wanting him now. John takes hold of her buttocks from beneath, pulling her up against him and taking her deep.

The workshop resounds with John's grunts of exertion, Fran's keening cries and the blows of their bodies against the wood. They do not speak each other's names, nor any other words of language. Eagerness and enthusiasm translate even in the absence of a common tongue.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Which Way Home?](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1721075) by [threewalls](https://archiveofourown.org/users/threewalls/pseuds/threewalls)




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